YOU’RE RUSTED! NO, WAIT, BUSTED! An undercover Sanitation Department cop stakes out a curb full of recycling to be picked up (above) before admitted thief Ralph Montanaro sneaks up and fills his van with the sellable scrap metal.Gregory P. Mango

CRIME DOESN’T PAY: Sanitation cops in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, issue $2,000 fines for Montanaro and his father (in driver’s seat) over the pilfered scrap.

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They wanna take out the trash.

The city Department of Sanitation’s police force has beefed up neighborhood patrols to combat the theft of valuable recyclable scrap metal carted to the curb.

“It’s a continuing problem, one that the department is very aggressively trying to combat,” said Vito Turso, a spokesman for the Sanitation Department, noting that old ovens, refrigerators and air-conditioning units command high prices at scrap yards these days.

Last year, a whopping 46 percent of the appliances put out for recycling were not at the location at the time of pickup — apparently taken by roving scrap-metal thieves.

That’s a jump from 36 percent the previous year. So far, for 2012, the rate is at 43 percent, or roughly 11,000 missed pickups.

The city has a contract with Sims Metal Management to recycle the scrap — and the city gets a cut of Sims’ action in return.

Sims has estimated it loses up to $4 million a year from the thievery, meaning city coffers are getting hit hard, too.

“It’s apparently good money,” said Lt. Robert DeRossi of the Sanitation police.

“People are renting U-Hauls and vans and going around the streets the night before [recycling], when people put stuff out, and they are taking it.”

A Post reporter joined Sanitation cops Joseph Fontana and Tommy Gee on Thursday night, when they took to the streets of Brooklyn in search of steel stealers.

“We recently caught a guy driving a Cadillac Escalade, and he’s got it full of metal. He tells me he’s taking it to make extra money,” Fontana said.

The first time someone is caught, they get a summons for $2,000.

The second time that amount increases to $5,000.

“These people . . . know which streets, which days, which areas. These guys know better than us when this stuff goes out,” Fontana said.

At 6:30 p.m. on the corner of Benson Avenue and Bay 32nd Street in Bensonhurst, the officers spotted a curb stocked with about a dozen metal chairs, metal fencing and other recyclables and began staking out the location.

Within 30 minutes, a van pulled up and a father-and-son team, both named Ralph Montanaro, started loading up the van. Gee and Fontana issued each a $2,000 summons.